SF loses effort to protect church from demolition

One person’s eyesore — for example, a vacant, decrepit 98-year-old building in a site that might be more profitably occupied by condominiums — may well be someone else’s historical landmark. That is, unless it’s owned by a church.

The city of San Francisco learned that lesson this week when the state’s First District Court of Appeal ruled that the attempt to designate the First St. John’s United Methodist Church at 1601 Larkin St. as a historic site conflicted with state law, which exempts religious institutions from local landmark rules.

The law was sponsored in 1994 by then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown to allow the Archdiocese of San Francisco to tear down some of its churches that had been damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake rather than pay for seismic upgrades to preserve them as landmarks. It allows a religious organization to prevent landmark status that would cause “substantial hardship.”

The unreinforced masonry building at Larkin and Clay streets was constructed in 1911 and used for religious services until 2002, when the church shut its doors because of declining membership and reopened as a day-care center and preschool. The church vacated the building in 2005 and contracted to sell the land to Pacific Polk Properties for a 27-unit condominium.

During an environmental review, however, the city Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board voted in 2007 to seek historic status for the building as the only existing California work of George Washington Kramer, a prominent church designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

If city supervisors granted landmark status — a decision that remains on hold — the church would have to preserve the building’s “exterior architectural features” in any alterations.

That won’t be necessary, though, under the appeals court ruling, which said this was just the type of case that the 1994 state law was intended to address.

The city could ask the state Supreme Court to review the case. Otherwise, said John McInerney of Pacific Polk Properties, the developer will apply for a demolition permit in a few months.